Back from retirement - big music still sucks balls

 Hey! 

Been away for a very long time, the last post was in 2012! I haven't been following copyright news nearly as much as I used to. Jon Newton's long departed p2p.net site was a great resource for copyright news, especially big music's RIAA lawsuits. 

Well, big music is at it again, this time suing the Internet Archive over ancient 78 rpm album recordings. Rolling stone has an article covering this here.

To all the creators and descendants of creators thinking they are going to get a chunk of the lawsuit pie, you are kidding yourselves. A question I asked repeatedly during the RIAA lawsuits yet was NEVER able to get an answer to was what, if any percent of the lawsuit money paid to the RIAA got distributed to the artists in whose name they were suing people? I'd bet money it was zero. When it comes to money, what goes to big music, stays with big music. It will be the same thing here. The public will lose a great resource of early recordings, big music and the artists will gain nothing in increased sales(A lot, if not most of this stuff isn't even available). 

Sonny Boner and Mickey Rat managed to vastly increase the length of copyright. The public would be far better served if it got rolled back to 50 years, or better yet, 28.

Record Contracts 101

UPDATE - 09/25/24 Been a while since I was here at Monkey House. I decided to place the links from Cosby Fitch's excellent article directly here. I may at some time in the future look for more recent articles on how the music biz screws artists.
Big music is a snake that has drained musicians dry for decades, yet always manages to skate, putting the blame on technology and piracy. Gene Simmons of KISS opined about some mythical before piracy age when everything was wonderful. For the vast majority of musicians, it wasn't. The following links chronicle that.

The Problem With Music - Steve Albini
The Truth about the Music Industry by Dave Paul
Courtney Love does the math - Courtney Love
By the power of Satan… by Lee Diamond
THE INTERNET DEBACLE – AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW by Janis Ian

Was just re-reading Crosbie Fitch's article FACing the Music. He makes some good points and provides some great links to articles about the music biz. Unfortunately as the article is a few years old some of the links are dead. I was able to dredge up some of the articles and added a couple more.

DEPRECIATED - link provided here has ironically...died.
In order to avoid future dead-linkitus I posted the entire text as well as (where applicable) working links if they still reside on the www. All authors named and accredited.

Thank you Euro's Pt2

What a GREAT piece of news to be reading on the 4th of July. ACTA is dead.

Today at 12:56, the European Parliament decided whether ACTA would be ultimately rejected or whether it would drag on into uncertainty. In a crushing 478-to-39 vote, the Parliament decided to reject ACTA once and for all. This means that the deceptive treaty is now dead globally.

This a a great victory of common people over corporations and their lackeys, the U.S. congress and president. So thank you Euro's, for doing the right thing by thwarting the U.S. from doing the wrong thing.

Thank you Euro's

It's been a tough ride in the people vs government/big corporations war. The people suffered a huge loss when the NDAA got passed.
It passed with nary a protest and I'd still say most people are unaware the politicians took an enormous diarrhea shit all over the constitution, passing a law that allows U.S. citizens to be detained indefinitely on the accusation of being involved with Al Quida or the Taliban.

Very much to my surprise SOPA, the copyright bill which would have given companies the right to block domain names of web sites they felt were engaging in or enabling copyright infringement, garnered HUGE opposition from both individuals and large technology companies like google that the bill wound up getting pulled. For now.

Another incredibly nasty piece of work ACTA also seemed to pass with little protest. This is not surprising since it was negotiated in secret.

There is, however, a dim hope. In Europe, at least people are waking up.

"Massive demonstrations against the draconian anti-piracy treaty ACTA are spanning four continents, with protests in more than 200 European cities alone. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets to prevent their countries and the European Parliament from putting the free Internet at risk by ratifying ACTA"

So from Monkey 2 U thanks Euros. Thank you for finally bringing MUCH needed attention to a rotten trade agreement which has slithered like a poisonous snake through the garden of freedom largely unseen and unopposed. Thank you for shining a light on the cockroaches in governments that have supported this.

  Te saluto.

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!?

The internet community gave a collective sigh of relief when SOPA died. Well those sighs may have been too soon.

While there is not enough info yet there is a possibility SOPA may yet rise from the grave under a different name, thanks to Sen Maj leader Harry Reed.

The rebuttal to push Internet-regulating legislation has transformed into a new cybersecurity bill. The particulars of the latest attempt by senators to censor the Internet have not been disclosed to the public.

However some leaks suggest that the bill will grant the authority to crack down on the Internet to the executive branch of power, namely the White House. It looks highly possible taking into consideration that the legislation has to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman.

The article goes on to explain that Lieberman previously co sponsored the kill switch bill that would have given the president the ability to shut down the internet.

I suspect that by calling this a "security" rather than a copyright bill the scums in congress hope to slip it by the sleeping public the same way they did with the NDAA. Monkey will be watching this one...

SOPA - dead for real this time?

I reported in a previous blog post that SOPA appeared to be dead. Then it looked like I was premature, as like a Zombie it just refused to die. Well now it may actually be dead for real, as it's chief sponsor Lamar Smith(R-Texas) said he is pulling the bill

"until there is wider agreement on a solution"

As Mike Masnick pointed out in his blog, by shutting down Megaupload the government has proven it doesn't need any new laws to go after sites it considers guilty of copyright infringement.

SOPA dropped?? Looks like Monkey spoke too soon.

Sigh, I should have known it was too good to be true, that the stinker of a bill SOPA was dead. There is just too much support from RIAA/MPAA MAFIAA groups for it to die quietly.